Oliver is an environmental historian of early modern capitalism and empire. His current book project reinterprets French colonialism in the eighteenth century as an attempt to overcome organic limits to growth. The book recovers the assumptions behind and ecological consequences of Colonial Enlightenment, which was motivated by ideas about the abundance of nature, but which repeatedly reconfigured, exhausted, and then neglected colonial landscapes. It tells the story of French capital chasing crisis around the world, from the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean, Senegambia and Guiana, before running aground in the Haitian Revolution. Future projects will look at drought and transitions to capitalism, and the ideas and practices of “the commons” in the age of revolutions.
Before coming to Berkeley, Oliver was in the Society of Fellows at the University of Chicago.